


Can You Wield This Darkness Blade?

by reminiscence



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: Freeverse, Gen, Poetry, ffn challenge: ZEXAL bingo: the non-flash version, ffn challenge: diversity writing challenge, ffn challenge: the prompts in steps challenge, word count: under 1000 words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-08-24
Packaged: 2018-08-10 18:36:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7856548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reminiscence/pseuds/reminiscence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because you're a creature of light, in the end, aren't you?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Can You Wield This Darkness Blade?

You want to help. The wall's falling apart and you want to help so very badly  
but you can't do anything until the shadow recedes from underfoot and they're tripping you up:  
cruel shadows, sneaky shadows that are like snakes winding around your ankles and threatening to bite  
and they do bite, when you try to kick them away so you can move through their swamp: they bite and leave little pin-prick holes  
that ooze blood and snake saliva. You'd slash them and scatter their guts if it'd work, but these snakes are shadow snakes  
and not even the blade of light seems to deter them; they instead slither away, out of light, out of sight, hugging shadows  
and shadows always are. They're always there, and this time your rope of life, of light, doesn't seem to go far enough  
to build you Bifrost's bridge - but you need Bifrost's bridge. You need it somehow and if you need to walk on shadow snakes  
to get there. You'll do it, because at the edge of your sight where a sliver of light slips through the closed doors is a red sliver:  
red, not yellow nor white nor a pale silver that can easily be mistaken for its drearier twin grey. Red for life. Red for fire. Red for blood  
and you know whose life, whose fire, whose blood and you worry because life and blood go together, but they also don't go together  
and blood means death, blood means approaching death and that scares you, because even if you free yourself from these snakes  
which hinder you so, you may be too late. And you can't allow yourself to be late. You need to get there, and you need to get there on time  
because you need to help. You want to help. The wall's falling apart and you need to fix it so very badly  
because there's something precious behind that wall and if it falls down, it'll be exposed to the world, like a baby born too soon  
and their lungs aren't coated with pretty soap suds that'll stop the air from corroding straight through, so they corrode  
and they shrivel up and they die like rotten and mouse-bitten cheese left in the larder, and what's behind the world's too important -  
he's too important - to let him rot away like that, let his corpse hang on display like the trophy it will invariably be, and the slap to his face,|  
but more than that, it's a precious thing, he's a precious person and it's worth painstakingly sealing all those cracks to save him  
If it weren't for this swamp of snakes that held him fast, so fast, that even the blade of light wouldn't cut  
But he'll do it. He'll get through. If light won't work, then there are four other elements that can fight: not darkness,  
Of course not darkness, because darkness is the shadows, darkness is the snakes - no, that's not true at all. Shadows are fake darkness  
Like mirrors are to light: fake, copies, incomplete…  
You can win, if you wield the darkness as your sword and cut these snakes that bind you  
And burn the poison with dark fire that will leave your blood in tact.  
But you're a creature of light, aren't you? Can you wield this sword?  
Is it enough...for you to need, to want?

**Author's Note:**

> Written for:
> 
> The Prompts in Steps Challenge, 3.08 - ficlet, labour  
> ZEXAL bingo: the non-flash version, #160 - shadow  
> Diversity Writing Challenge, b1 - between 15 and 30 lines poem


End file.
